Research Students

Adrian Evans – PhD

PhD Part-time, commenced January 2015
Supervisors: Professor Nicholas Temple and Dr Lisa Stansbie
Research Centre: CUDAS

Research:
Modern architecture is an essay in Zeitgeist – the Spirit of the Time. Largely, it fails to engage with the Genius Loci – the Spirit of the Place.
A modern, but vernacular architecture has emerged in the rural West of Scotland: However, it still denies its Landscape context. Around the dwelling, the land is scraped to a flat plane: gravel; lawn; deck. The palimpsest that was the landscape is reduced to a compositional Background to the Architectural Figure. Its Local Distinctiveness, its narrative, is erased.
There is, in on the remote coast of Assynt, a tiny, extraordinary building, brutally modern, and an element of the landscape quite completely. The Hermit’s Castle, declares in form and name, antithetical archetypes of Scottish architecture in the wilderness: Castle and Bothy.

From this touchstone, My research practice will attempt to find a synthesis of Zeitgeist and Genius Loci in the dialogue between contemporary architecture and land.

Ahmed Ahmed Aly Fahim – PhD

PhD Part-time, commenced September 2016
Supervisors: Professor Angela Lee

Research:
The Impact of the Treble Lean Construction Constraints (i.e. Standardisation, Tools and Techniques, and Culture and Change) in Healthcare Hospitals Projects.
The manufacturing industry has a considerable interest in achieving substantial improvements in terms of productivity and quality. Researchers are concerned with the applicability of “lean production” principles currently implemented in manufacturing to the Healthcare Hospitals Projects. The attractive aspect persuading researchers to perform further extensive research is the observation that manufacturing has succeeded in reducing cost and time while improving quality and productivity, whereas the Healthcare Hospitals Projects has not achieved such positive results.

Caterina Benincasa-Sharman – PhD

PhD Part-time, commenced October 2007
Supervisors: Professor Paul Ward (Modern British History)
Research Centre: Academy of British and Irish Studies and CUDAS

Research:
The focus of my current research looks at the events and outputs that made up the 1951 Festival of Britain celebrations in Leeds, York, Hull, Manchester and Liverpool. These were key cities in Yorkshire and Lancashire (pre 1974 boundary changes) that were identified by the London based Festival Office to receive significant festival status. These cities used the Festival of Britain to boost civic pride and consolidate their identies of space and place in a post-war world, often restoring, preserving or creating new buildings of architectural significance.

Kushani De Silva – PhD

PhD Part-time, commenced April 2015 (Third year)
Supervisors: Prof. Richard Haigh and Prof. Dilanthi Amaratunga
Research Centre: GDRC

Research:

Gender Equity and Disaster Resilience Associated with the Third Revolution Digital Technology

Resilience describes the capacities of societies, communities and individuals or a social-ecological system to deal with adverse consequences and the impacts of hazard events. Emergency Communications and Warning Systems will enable improving disaster resilience. As many have online access today and young women have increased their online communication while young men tend to explore technology resources, the potential of using user friendly third revolution digital technology such as semantic features has the potential to improve the access to early warning/risk information supporting the decision making of the communities at immediate risk saving lives. Integration of gender perspectives into disaster risk reduction by means of fostering awareness about gender equity to help reduce the impact of disasters, incorporating gender analysis in disaster management can decrease vulnerability of the communities. Therefore, this study aims to critically examine the effect of third revolution digital technology on gender equity within disaster early warning systems.

Ngo Kien Thinh – PhD

PhD Full-time, commenced September 2015
Supervisors: Dr Yun Gao and Dr Ioanni Delsante

Research:
A study of the social-cultural aspects of the self-built housing in Hanoi city, Vietnam after the economic reform in the 1980s.
In Vietnam, private self-built housing has contributed large amounts shelter, and they play important role to characterize Vietnamese urban. Throughout history, although there are various changes in the architectural elements, there are still some important rules within the dynamic transformation process. Among the strict control of regulations and plans, the self-built housing, which organized by citizen to suit with their life styles, can not easy to replace by modern house forms. Base on this observation, the original question of this study has been how and why do people practice the self-built construction under the complex urban environment? And what is the primary concept within the self-built housing?

Thanh Hung Dang – PhD

PhD Full-time, commenced October 2015
Supervisors: Professor Adrian Pitts and Dr Yun Gao
Research Centre: CUDAS

Research:
The study is seeking a balance between provision of the indoor thermally comfortable conditions and energy efficiency for cooling by optimizing design solutions and developing practical guidance of natural ventilation for specific dwelling types.

The main residential building type studied is ‘Shophouses’ which are the most repetitive vernacular terrace types found not only in Vietnam but also other parts of Southeast Asia. These dwellings are long and thin making it tricky to find ways to enhance the cooling effect from natural air flows which are the typical technique to reduce discomfort. Under increasing impacts of global warming and climatic events by rapid urbanization, it is more important to find ways to reduce the thermal stresses from heat discomfort. The dwelling types represent more than 40% of the housing stock in some areas and the consequence of the lack of air flow is increasing installation and use of air conditioning.

The project seeks to combine an understanding of building and urban typologies, planning implementation, thermal measurement, occupant surveys, modeling and other analytical tools to develop practical guidance and understanding for the future. In essence, it is to find the optimum combinations to reduce thermal stress balancing comfort and energy use.